God's Pocket - Pete Dexter

by Pete Dexter

  He'd thought about selling the property. A year after he'd bought it a developer had offered him $140,000, and he knew then he ought to take the money before he wrapped himself around a truck some night trying to get there. He knew he ought to take the money because he'd never build a house there. He'd gone past that turn.

  He didn't sell the meadow. Not for $140,000, not for the quarter million they'd offered him last year. Not after the marriage ended, not after he'd nearly died in the hospital. He had a picture in his head, and in the picture he was safe all the time.

  He came to the bottom of the meadow, and climbed over a barbed—wire fence that separated it from the woods. A long time ago the land had been a cow pasture. He began to sweat again, and he felt shaky and sick and poisoned. He stopped for a moment and it passed.

  The last hundred feet to the water was grown over with thick underbrush, and everything that grew there had thorns or stickers and was four times as wiry as it looked. Shellburn walked carefully, lifting his feet straight up and down, pushing the briers down and away with his hands, then stepping on them to get past. The briers rose with his feet and then clung to his pants legs and made tearing sounds as he made his way through.

  When that happened, something in him always wanted to run. But he was slow and steady, and pointed for the water. Then he ducked under the lower branches of an oak tree and was there. The tree was 150 years old, so thick you couldn't get your arms around it. You might as well try to hug your house. The mouth of the tree took the last six feet of ground before the bank dropped down to the beach. Shellburn used a branch to ease himself down onto the round, gray rocks that were the floor there. Then he looked back at the bank where the tide had eaten the ground from underneath the old oak and had left half its root system hanging in the air.

  The tree was tilted about thirty degrees toward the water, holding on. Shellburn hadn't noticed it until after the heart attack, when he was thirty degrees toward the water himself He admired the tree until his breathing got easier. The wind off the water was cool, and he walked north until the beach changed from rocks to sand, and then found a place to sit where the bank fit his back and held his head, and it was no work or pain to look out over his cove. He closed his eyes and the picture was still there—he could feel it the same way he could feel the cove—and for a long time what he was and what he might have been were as close as Shellburn could ever get them. And it was late afternoon before he knocked on Jeanie Scarpato's door in God's Pocket.

  * * *

  Mickey got up early 'while the house was still quiet. He didn't want her to see him in Leon's bed again. When he'd cleaned up and gone downstairs, though, Jeanie and her sisters were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and working over a new box of donuts. There was a beer can on the sink, where he'd left it when he'd come in last night. He'd had maybe a six-pack to help him sleep.

  He walked in there with the beer can and the sisters and patted Jeanie on the shoulder. She reached up and touched his hand, for just a second, and then let her hand fall back into her lap. Like it was a pain there that came and went before it mattered.

  "You all right this morning, Jeanie? You sleep all right?"

  The sisters gave each other the now-famous look over the table. "Jeanie?"

  "It just seems like it's been so long," she said. He could barely hear her. "Like it happened two years ago and it's still going on."

  "It'll start going fast again," he said. "As soon as it's taken care of and we did what we could." And it was like saying it to an empty room. It sounded like that too, like he was telling it to himself so he'd believe it.

  He looked at the curve of her head, and how the hair seemed to get blonder where it touched her skin, and for the first time he thought he might not be able to get her back. Not even after the sisters moved out and Leon was in the ground. And then for a few seconds, he couldn't breathe.

  He took the truck around to half a dozen regular stops and only got rid of half of the meat that Bird's nephew had cut before the electricity went out. If he didn't find somebody with a restaurant, he was going to lose most of it. He'd have to get rid of it before it went bad, one way or the other. Anywhere meat went bad, it never smelled the same. He should of been pissed at Bird—anybody with eyes could see he couldn't handle that kind of a load—but when he thought about Bird, all he could see was the old woman leading him home. He'd keep the meat seven days if the truck stayed cold. Seven days; and then he'd take it over to the Women's S.P.C.A. Or maybe he'd find somebody in Jersey.

  He made his stops and then he went to the bank, and began thinking about the horse. There was $868 in his account. He took it in fifties, all except what couldn't go into fifties. The teller's name was Miss Olby, and she was plainly inconvenienced. Back in the truck, he reached up under the seat and found McKenna's bag. He put the fifties on top of the money from the Hollywood and the Uptown, and it wouldn't fit into his pocket. He went back.

  The bank had velvet ropes in the lobby, with the idea that you were supposed to stand in line between the ropes until it was your turn to see a teller. The way you knew when a teller was available was that she would turn on a light over her cage. Which is all to say it was not Mickey's idea to go back to Miss Olby to turn the rest of the money into fifties too. But when he got to the front of the line, her light went on and he put the stacked bills in front of her and asked for twenty-eight more fifty-dollar bills.

  He had seen people take house floods better. She sighed, she checked her drawer, and then she had to get up off her stool, and go clear to the next cage for more fifties. "Usually we don't do this," she said.

  He wondered if it was some kind of sign he should leave the money alone, that something would go wrong at Keystone. He decided it couldn't be, though. If you waited for a friendly bank teller to get your money out, the banks would have it forever.

  He found Bird dressed in a suit with somebody else's shoulders, sitting behind the wheel of the yellow Cadillac in front of the flower shop. Mickey parked the truck inside and said hello to Aunt Sophie, who picked him a carnation off the counter and asked him to keep an eye on Bird.

  Bird had the car running and the air conditioner on. The windows were open, the radio was playing, and he was sitting there in the middle of it, staring at the racing form. Mickey slid into the front seat and looked to see what keeping an eye on him was going to take. "How you doin'?" he said.

  Bird handed the form to Mickey, dropped the car into gear and drove sixty miles an hour down South Street, slamming over potholes. Mickey put his eyes behind the racing form so he wouldn't have to see it coming when they died.

  Bird got on I-95 at Girard and drove up through North Philadelphia, and then out past the Northeast. To get an idea how Philadelphia was, all you had to do was go to the Northeast and try to find a street sign. Going to the Northeast was like going to the hospital, you forget all the little things they do to you, you forget how slow time moves until you're there again.

  The road was six lanes—three each way—divided by a concrete wall. Bird slowed down to forty miles an hour and drove all the way to the Street Road exit in the general area of the middle lane. About halfway there he said, "I took care of that matter for you, Mickey."

  Mickey looked at him, waited. "You remember," Bird said, "that matter at Holy Redeemer with Leon."

  “I remember."

  "Right. I got some people lookin' into that right now. I ought to have somethin' for you to tell Jeanie by the time we go home, if you want." He gave Mickey a smile straight from Byberry.

  Bird did the driveway into Keystone at sixty miles an hour. He threw the Cadillac into Park still going around thirty and stopped one yard short of a kid in a red vest and a black tie who, with the confidence of youth, obviously thought he was in control of the valet parking traffic. The Cadillac would have stopped on top of the boy, but in the end he'd run. The car made the last noise you hear before somebody you live with tosses their cookies. Bird got out, handed the kid
in the red vest a five-dollar bill and then bought a program, all in one thought. "Be careful of it," Bird said to the kid, “it's new."

  They took the escalator up to the reserved seats, which Bird paid for. Then Bird bought a couple of large beers in paper cups and they sat down to wait. It was a wait Mickey wouldn't have minded at another track. At another track he would have gone down to the paddock and looked at horses or trainers, sometimes you could see something that would tell you what was going on inside the horse. That was the only kind of spooky shit Mickey didn't mind thinking. Something about Keystone, though, made you hate to move.

  Bird spread the racing form over the seats in front of him and studied the seventh race. The two women sitting in those seats turned around and looked at Mickey in a way he was getting used to. Bird read the racing form the same way rich kids arranged cocaine in lines on their mirrors, scared shitless that something was going to blow away from him.

  "It's the same as it was last night," Mickey said. Bird didn't hear him. His finger was following a race that the only other New York horse in the race had run a year ago, as a two-year-old. Mickey had seen the race and thrown it out. He was the kind of handicapper who could throw a race out and not think about it again. Bird wasn't.

  "I don't like this other filly, Mick," he said. He slid the form over to Mickey, keeping his finger on the race that worried him. "She's come down a long ways in class."

  Mickey said, "Yes, she did."

  Bird went over it again, that race and a couple of others. The filly hadn't run in half a year. "I don't like her," he said again. "She'd got a decent workout last week .... "

  Mickey shrugged. "Put her on the bottom of an exacta," he said. He opened his own form and looked over the fifth race. Then he got up, bet a ten on a fourteen-year-old horse named Lexington Park, got a couple more beers and watched the race on a television set. He'd bet the same ten dollars on the same horse in Chicago a long time ago, and he'd won then and he almost won now. This time, though, the favorite got him in the last couple of strides.

  Mickey sat down beside Bird. “That's somethin', you know he said. Bird looked up from his racing form and the seventh race.

  "What?"

  "That old horse went out and almost stole that race," Ezkey said. He pointed out to the track, where they were bringing the old gelding back, his neck and mouth foaming. You could see the heat coming off his back. Bird looked for halfa second, then put his nose back in the seventh race.

  "This horse," he said finally, "this horse can beat Turned Leaf."

  Mickey said, "Your nerves are eatin' your brain, Bird. Lookit, you got a couple beers sittin' on the floor. Drink a beer, relax, give yourself a chance .... "

  Bird looked at the beers, then at Mickey. "I took care of that matter for you at the hospital," he said.

  “Yeah, thanks," Mickey said.

  "I talked to downtown," he said. "They listen to me, Mick. You oughta listen to me too. The filly can beat Turned Leaf."

  Mickey said, "You remember what we saw up in New York? You remember about sewin' up her pussy? I ain't tel1in' you what to do, Bird, but if she runs at all, there's nothin' in this fuckin' dog kennel that's going to catch her." Bird took a roll of money out of his pocket and began to count it, right there in his seat. "What the fuck are you doin' now?"

  Bird said, "It's the other filly, Mick."

  Mickey said, "How much you got there?"

  Bird shrugged. "Seven, eight thou, I don't know. Whatever I could get my hands on. You know how things been." Mickey watched the sixth race thinking about Aunt Sophie. She'd asked him to keep an eye on Arthur. He didn't know if that meant to take his money away before he could lose it or not. He didn't know how he'd do that in the middle of the reserved section of the clubhouse either.

  The tote board flashed up the seventh race and turned Leaf, the two horse, opened at eight to one.

  "Three to one," Bird said. "They made her the second favorite in the program, and all these fuckin' cannibals never would of seen her are going to bet her down. You wait and see .... "

  Mickey looked at the board and Bird's fil1y—the six—was three to one. “C'mon, Bird, I'm responsible," Mickey said. "I told Sophie I'd keep an eye on you."

  Bird said, "Responsible? There's nobody responsible for each other."

  Mickey leaned back in his seat and watched the board a few minutes, then he stood up to bet. "Be right back," he said. He went to the fifty-dollar window and put the stack of fifties on the counter. “Two win, forty-five times," he said. The man behind the window was smoking a cigar. He sighed and punched up the tickets and never looked up. Mickey thought he had a future as a bank teller if he wanted it.

  He put the tickets in the pocket where his money had been and bought himself a watery Pepsi-Cola. He took a swallow and checked the cup, wondering what kind of people Jeanie's family was to drink that kind of shit night and day.

  When he got back to the seats, Bird was gone and there was a jockey change on Turned Leaf. They'd put a Colombian named Charles Suaite on her, and Mickey didn't like the looks of that at all. Bird had left two beers on the door and his racing form on his seat, and the smell of hair oil up and down the aisle. When he came back, he was carrying three inches of tickets, most of them exactas with the New York filly on top. "Not the whole eight thousand," Mickey said.

  Bird sat down next to him, picked one of the beers up off the floor and took a long drink. "It turned out I had a little more," he said. He split the tickets into two piles—exactas and win tickets—and put one pile in the left pocket of his suit coat and one pile in the right pocket. Then he patted the pockets. “George ain't never going to say no to Bird again," he said. George was the automatic twenty-four-hour bank teller at Girard Bank.

  "You're fuckin' crazy," Mickey said.

  Bird nodded. His filly went to Eve to one, Turned Leaf stayed where she was. Mickey closed his eyes and waited. There wasn't anything he could do about it now. Not about horses or jockeys or people, alive or dead. It was out of his hands.

  A few minutes later, just after they'd announced one minute to post, he heard Bird say, "No, no . . . Fuck." He opened his eyes and looked at the board, and somebody had dumped enough late money on the six horse to drop her to five to two. “The fuckin' cannibals," Bird said. Down on the track they were loading the gate. The two men pushed them in, one at a time.

  Horses didn't like the starting gate, neither did jockeys. That's where you got killed.

  "Cannibals," Bird said again. That was what he called anybody that knew less about the horses than he did, but it wasn't ignorance behind that kind of late money, it was the opposite.

  Mickey had a feeling that seemed to continue from the moment that morning when he'd looked down at Jeanie's hair and the curve of her head and thought maybe he'd lost her. It was part of the same thing.

  The race was only six furlongs, which was a good thing for the Colombian. He couldn't have held her much longer. He put Turned Leaf on the outside and pulled her head that way all the way around. And she ran anyway, looking sideways. She came six wide around the last turn, fifteen lengths behind, and still closed so hard that the Colombian had to stand up to keep her from finishing second.

  Mickey watched the finish standing up, without moving, and then he sat down. "They ought to break his legs," he said, not to anybody in particular. "That spic couldn't of been plainer about it if he'd of nailed her dick to the starting gate." He noticed Bird then. He'd taken the exactas out of the side of his coat and begun to separate the winning tickets from the others. All of the exactas had the six horse on top, so everything in the other pocket would be a win on the six.

  "I tried to tell you, Mick," he said. "It was a lock .... " The prices came up on the board then. Bird's filly paid seven dollars to win, and the exactas, six-one, was $54.60. Bird sorted his tickets. "Sometimes you just know," he said. "Sometimes you're so sure it ain't real."

  Mickey didn't say anything. He took the tickets out of his own
pocket and dropped them on the floor, that was how easy you got left behind. "You notice that race my filly run in New York?" Bird said.

  "Yes, I seen it," Mickey said.

  "I figure they wouldn't of kept her out this long if they wasn't going to bring her back ready. I figured they had her ready to run that same race again .... " Mickey closed his eyes.

  Bird was talking and sorting, Mickey was imagining what he would say to Smilin' Jack. There must of been people in the neighborhood before that died and the families didn't have the money to cover it. He'd ask him for a couple of weeks, a month to get him his cash. Bird was still sorting. He must of had eighty ten-dollar exactas that said six-one.

  The ones that had the six over some other horse he was flipping into the air, one at a time, watching them blow in the wind and drop into the seats around him. A few of them dropped on Mickey, one landed in his chair. "When I get like this I ain't real .... "

  Mickey went with Bird to cash the tickets. It came to just over $32,000. Bird divided the money and put half of it into one side of the suit coat and half of it into the other side. "You ready to go?" he said.

  Bird gave the kid he'd almost killed on the way in a twenty to get the car, and then drove out of the parking lot at thirty miles an hour, just like somebody normal. On the way back to I-95 he said, "What was that job Monday? Seven hundred?"

  Mickey shook his head. "It's old business, Bird. I took the meat." It was one thing to lose your ass, it was something else to have your `friends feeling sorry for you.

  "Seven hundred, right?" Bird reached into one of his coat pockets and pulled out about two pounds of hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Mickey. "Take seven of them," he said. "Take ten, for the interest."

  Mickey gave them back. “Keep your money, Bird," he said. "I took the meat."

  "Fuck meat," he said. "Look, I got maybe thirty thou here. I got to give six back, which I borrowed, the rest is clear. I'm goin' to They got trailer parks down there, you can buy one of them things for what, twelve, thirteen thou? That's what Sophie wants, to live in one of them trailer parks with her buddies, grow some shit in the yard."